Making a list and checking it twice…

I make them all the time and sometimes I have spin-off lists of my main lists.

It’s like my lists have offspring and we are truly multiplying and filling the whole earth.

I am one of those who will write down something I did that wasn’t on the list, just so I can check it off.

This year I found a notepad that makes me laugh the way it is set up.

It has the words Reality Checklist in bold across the top and then at the bottom it says…

“My reality check has bounced”.

There are blocks set up with titles and these increase in space as you go down the page:

Tasks I Will Accomplish

Things I Hope I can Finish

Items I May as Well Write off as Never

Snowball’s Chance in…you know…

These categories give me a new way to prioritize and I have been using them this week to motivate me to get our trim up, the fall decor put away and the house cleaned.

Each page has a square on every line so I can make a check mark upon completion of an item.

But you know what…that is not enough for me.

I find the need to mark completely through the details of each job.

I realized just making a check wasn’t enough to make me feel I had really completed something that needed to be done.

As I was praying last night about what I could send you as encouragement today, it occurred to me why words like these are so reassuring to one like me….

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all your sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; He took it away, nailing it to the cross. Colossians 2: 13-14

I love that.

He didn’t just check off a task…He canceled out a debt.

The Law is good but it cannot save us.

We have a snowball’s chance in Hades (as my mom would have worded it) of meeting the requirements of God’s perfect Law.

But in Christ, our sins and shortcomings and old nature are CANCELED OUT…not checked off…

but erased…obliterated…eternally nailed to the cross of Jesus Christ.

That is good news, isn’t it?

We can live now in the joy of obedience because we are truly living free…

not so we can check things off but because it was written off forever <3

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2 thoughts on “Making a list and checking it twice…”

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS!
Totally like me too!
I have to cross it off
I write stuff down after I’ve done it too… makes me feel like… YES… I did more than I thought… then I cross it off.
And, oh… Jesus, Thank You!
What a great post, Laura!